Uncanny Treks

Bob and Matt discuss Lower Decks S2E3.

TKO S1E20 (25 May 94) vs. Collaborator S2E24 (22 May 94) -Matt & Bob debate whether we’d be better off w/ the Mutai or The Purge franchise -Theodore Bikel also played Worf’s foster father in The Next Generation -Matt’s favorite boxing movies are Rocky (1976), Raging Bull (1980), & Pulp Fiction (1994). Bob’s are The Set-up (1949), Raging Bull , & Creed (2015) -Matt’s favorite martial ar...

Bob and Matt discuss Season 2 Episode 2 of Lower Decks.

Bob and Matt review The Suicide Squad. To support our podcast, please consider subscribing to our Patreon at http://www.patreon.com/uncannytreks .

Quality of Mercy S1E19 (17 Aug 94) vs. Crossover S2E23 (15 May 94) -Matt maybe coins a phrase for a common sf trope: hardluck telepathy, examples from the X-Men include: Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Betsy Braddock, Kwannon, David Haller, Xi’an Coy Manh, Dani Moonstar, Quentin Quire, David Alleyne, & Stepford Cuckoos -Matt educates Bob on ‘Cult of Personality’ -All the talk of spacing puts Bob in min...

Bob and Matt discuss the season 2 premiere of Lower Decks.

Babylon² S1E18(10 Aug 94) vs. The Wire S2E22 (8 May 94) -3 interesting superhero examples of the unstuck in time trope in Captain America: Reborn (2009-10), Batman: Return of Bruce Wayne (2010), & Infinite Avengers (2014) -Matt gets Yaphet Kotto in Alien (1979) vibes from Garibaldi -Matt gets Labyrinth (1986) vibes from Zathras -Bob gets Tom Waits “What’s He Building?” (1999) vibes off Delenn...

A Voice in the Wilderness- Part 2 S1E17 (3 Aug 94) vs. Maquis p1-2 S2E20-1 (24 Apr & 1 May 94) -Bob gets annoyed at Matt’s spurious Star Wars Death Star references -Ron Canada played the crooked chief of LA police in The Shield (2002-8) -There’s a very good 2017 episode of The Dig interviewing Aziz Rana’ about his book 2 Faces of American Freedom (2014) on US settler colonialism -Bob’s about t...

A Voice in the Wilderness p1 S1E16 (20 Jul 94) vs. Blood Oath S2E19 (27 Mar 94) -Kor, Koloth, Kang, Curzon, & Sulu’s backstory w/ the Albino is explored in the Michael Martin & Andy Mangels Excelsior novel Forged in Fire (2007) -Before TNG, in the Star Trek paracanon, Klingons were more like TNG Romulans, careful strategists, & Romulans were more like TNG Klingons, honor-bound warriors...

Eyes S1E15 (13 Jul 94) vs. Profit & Loss S2E18 (20 Mar 94) -Bob misspoke & references the great Hong Kong film trilogy Infernal Affairs (2002-3) remade into Marty Scorsese’s The Departed (2006) -There have been 236 Friends episodes (1994-2004) & 154 It’s always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-) episodes so far. Bob stupidly misremembers Always Sunny episode title formats -Matt dubs Jeffrey...

Grail S1E14 (6 Jul 94) vs. Playing God S2E17 (27 Feb 94) -Matt commences his ritual of torturing Bob by reminding him of Friends: The Reunion (2021) -Bob has been reading the Thanos v2 (2017-8) series, which has story arcs by Jeff Lemire/Mike Deodato & Donny Cates/Geoff Shaw & includes the conceit that Thanos tortures random people on earth, confident the Avengers won’t notice - Blowback S...

Signs & Portents S1E13 (18 May 94) vs. Necessary Evil S2E8 (14 Nov 93) -The opening of ‘Necessary Evil’ has big film noir or gothic melodrama vibes like Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940), The Letter (1940), Casablanca (1942), Jane Eyre (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), or Secret beyond the Door (1947) -Bob retells a maybe apocryphal story of confusion on the set of the film noir The Big Sl...

By Any Means Necessary S1E12 (11 May 94) vs. Rules of Acquisition S2E7 (6 Nov 93) -The best contemporary US & UK books on labor strategy from organizers are Jane McAlevey Raising Expectations & Raising Hell (2012), No Shortcuts (2016), A Collective Bargain (2020), Shaun Richman Tell the Bosses We’re Coming (2020), & Len McCluskey Why You Should Be a Trade Unionist (2020) -For an an acc...

Survivors S1E11 (4 May 94) vs. Cardassians S2E5 (24 Oct 93) -Garibaldi’s, Sinclair’s, & the Shadows’ backstory are further explored in a very bad arc of the Babylon 5 DC comic, Shadows Past & Present (1996) -The classic contemporary critique of NAFTA is the Ralph Nader edited collection Case against Free Trade: GATT, NAFTA, & the Globalization of Corporate Power (1993) that includes co...

Believers S1E10 (27 Apr 94) vs. Invasive Procedures S2E4 (17 Oct 93) -We were happy to recognize John Glover who played Lionel Luthor & voiced the Riddler on Batman: The Animated Series & Tim Russ who played Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager -The Trill issues raised in this episode callback to our prior discussion: https://rss.com/podcasts/b5ds9/174686/ -Some of the implications about the Trill...

Deathwalker S1E9 (20 Apr 94) vs. The Homecoming- The Circle- The Siege S2 E1-3(26 Sep, 3 Oct, 10 Oct 93) -A quick consult of the Babylon Project wiki says the only two major Earth Alliance wars before the series Babylon 5 began were the Dilgar War (2230-2) & the Earth-Minbari War (2245-8), although we later vaguely learn of something called the Canal Wars, which don’t sound like a major inters...

Bob and Matt discuss the best and worst of DS9 Season 1.

Sky Full of Stars S1E8 (16 Mar 94) vs. In the Hands of the Prophets S1 E20, Finale (20 Jun 93) -René Descartes entertains questions about the first principles of reason & the possibility of deception & error in Discourse on the Method (1637) & Meditations on 1st Philosophy (1641) -Philip K. Dick’s narratives often engage w/ questions of Cartesian doubt, for example Do Androids Dream of...

The War Prayer S1 E7 (9 Mar 94) vs. Duet S1 E19 (13 Jun 93) -”War Prayer” (1905) is a Mark Twain prose poem, originating from his disgust about the Spanish-US war & US occupation of the Philippines -Upon rewatching, G’Kar is inciting a crowd of Narn, Minbari, Drazi, & presumably other species from the League of Non-Aligned Worlds that Bob didn’t recognize. Pointedly, no Centauri are in the...

Mind War S1 E6 (2 Mar 94) v. The Forsaken S1 E17 (23 May 93) -The great rabbit is on the lawn in Donnie Darko (2001) -Walter Koeing played navigator Chekov in seasons 2 & 3 of the original Star Trek (1966-69) & guest starred in the Baywatch spoof Son of the Beach (2000-2) -Koeing’s parents were Russian Jewish immigrants from Lithuania to Chicago -Alfred Bester is a great golden age sf writ...

B5 S1 E5 Parliament of Dreams ( 25 Feb 94) v DS9 S1 E13 Battle Lines (25 Apr 93) -Baruch Spinoza is a Dutch philosopher of Portugese Jewish ancestry, famous for his pantheist (or crypto-atheist) metaphysics & ethics & really influential on later continental European philosophy -Screwball comedies are a romantic comedy subgenre prominent from the 1930s to mid 60s, famous for witty banter &a...

B5 S1 E4 Infection (18 Feb 94) v DS9 S1E11 Nagus (21 Mar 93) -Ikarrian infections recalls in various ways the Star Trek: Next Generation antagonists the Borg, the role of evil AI in the original Trek (“Return of the Archons” [1967] & “Ultimate Computer” [1968] are 2 of the most prominent), the Phalanx in X-Men comics (they’re first big story Phalanx Covenant came out a few months after this ep...

B5 S1 E3 Born to the Purple (9 Feb 94) v DS9 S1 E8 Dax (13 Feb 93) -For more about metaphysical questions of identity, consult the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ’s entries on ‘identity’, ‘personal identity’, ‘identity over time’, & ‘relative identity’ -For a recent critique of meritocracy, see Daniel Markovits Meritocracy Trap: How America's Foundational Myth Feeds Inequality, Dismantles...

B5 S1 E2 Soul Hunter (2 Feb 94) v DS9 S1 E7 Q-Less (8 Feb 93) -Bob misidentifies the year for “Soul Hunter”; it’s actually 94 -Sf writer Isaac Asimov is most famous for his Robot (1950-6) & Foundation (1951-3) trilogies -Bob continues his streak of being one year off on airdates, Bladerunner is actually 82 (it came out on the same day as John Carpenter’s The Thing , remarkably) -Q appears in 1...

In this bonus episode, Bob and Matt discuss the trailers that dropped on First Contact Day.